Malayalam literary stalwart M.T. Vasudevan Nair has made stinging remarks against “ritualistic hero worship” and the refusal to admit mistakes in today’s politics, triggering intense debate in Kerala because the comments were made in the presence of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

With the 90-year-old writer not naming names, many media outlets have portrayed his remarks as criticism of Vijayan while CPM leaders and sympathisers have suggested his target was Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The author remains out of the media’s reach.

“Politics is a recognised path to attain power. Power could mean dominance or totalitarianism,” MT, as the Jnanpith awardee is called, said while addressing the inaugural session of the Kerala Literature Festival in Kozhikode on Thursday.

“A position in the Assembly or Parliament is an open opportunity towards dominance. We buried long ago the theory that power is a great opportunity to serve the people,” he added, reading out from a written text, apparently an essay he had published two decades ago.

The web portal of CPM mouthpiece Deshabhimani on Friday reproduced three pages from MT’s Selected Essays, published in 2003, that contain the same comments and argued the target could therefore not be Vijayan, who became chief minister in 2016.

MT had in his speech referred to how the ballot had brought the communists to power in Kerala in 1957 and rued that some leaders assumed “they have achieved the target itself” with the electoral victory.

He said the first communist chief minister, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, truly believed that power was a “great opportunity to build an institution by transforming the crowds that participated in processions, gathered at maidans and filled ballot boxes into a responsible society”.

He then regretted that in today’s socio-political and culture spheres, no one owned up to mistakes the way EMS did.

“Some people mocked him when he admitted they (the Left) had made mistakes in their approach to literature…. But today no leader in the political, social or cultural sphere owns up to mistakes,” the author said.

“EMS always tried to change the old thinking that a few have to lead the many. That is why he was never part of any ritualistic hero worship.”

State CPM secretary M.V. Govindan had recently described the chief minister as incorruptible and equated him with the sun. The party regularly puts up giant cut-outs and hoardings depicting its “Captain” (Vijayan).

Some CPM leaders claimed that MT’s barbs were aimed at Modi. “It appeared to me as criticism of the central government,” CPM leader and Left Democratic Front convener E.P. Jayarajan said on Friday.

Left-leaning writer Asokan Charuvil, who attended the fest’s inaugural session, accused the media of misinterpreting MT.

“The Right-wing media of Kerala is trying to interpret everything against Pinarayi Vijayan,” he said on Facebook.

Literary and social critic N.E. Sudheer wrote a Facebook post on Thursday describing what MT had told him sometime after the fest inauguration.

“This is what MT told me: ‘I was not criticising. But I felt I should state some facts. It’s good if that has paved the way for anyone to self-introspect’,” Sudheer wrote.

On Friday, Sudheer told a television channel: “Today we realise these are the words Kerala has been waiting for.”

Poet K. Satchidanandan told reporters on Friday that “flattery doesn’t befit communism” and added: “Communism moves forward on its ideology and not by focusing on individuals.”